


redo

by goodbee



Category: Supernatural
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BM (brotherly melodrama), F/F, F/M, M/M, again. not for a While, everyone’s a couple years younger bc i thought it was funny, he's his own content warning, i guess, im not going to rewrite the entire series. but im gonna get damn close, it’s taken me longer to tag this than it took to write the first chapter, john winchester..... sucks, like a full au a lot of things are different, look. in short? it’s if supernatural was a gay magic sitcom pretty much, lots of the-angels-are-brothers content, nonbinary michael!, people talk about their feelings, there will be weed! castiel is a stoner pass it on, there'll be warnings in the summary if there's anything graphic, tune in if ur in for a wild ride
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-06
Updated: 2019-10-29
Packaged: 2020-06-23 17:08:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19705774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goodbee/pseuds/goodbee
Summary: “Can I know his name now?”“It’s Dean,” Dean said, not really looking at Jess, too busy giving Sam a prime What The Hell look. “You didn’t tell—sorry, who is she?”“This is Jess. My girlfriend.”“God, she’s out of your league. But whatever—you didn’t tell your girlfriend my name?”“He’s mentioned you exactly twice. Once he said ‘I have an older brother’ and the other time he said you taught him how to pick locks.”“Hell yeah I did. But—okay, none of this matters, Sam, can I talk to you? In private?”“Why in private?” Sam asked, moving to grab Jess’s hand. “I trust Jess.”“I’m sure she’s great, but if you haven’t told her anything, then…” Dean trailed off. Sam stood his ground.“Fine. Uh. Look. Dad’s on a hunting trip, and he hasn’t been home in a few days.”





	1. SEASON 1 EPISODE 1

A baby was asleep in his crib until the creaking of steps woke him up. He giggled at the funny looking man in the room with him. 

The baby’s mother heard the footsteps, too, and she came running in. Less than thirty seconds later, the funny looking man was long gone, and the mother seemed to have vanished. The father walked into the room to tell her to come back to bed, but he couldn’t see her anywhere. 

The baby giggled at the ceiling. Something dripped onto his nose. 

The father looked up. 

In the hallway, the baby’s older brother rubbed his eyes, wondering what all the fuss was about. He heard his dad scream and everything got really hot really fast. The next thing he knew, the baby was shoved into his arms, and his dad was yelling “Go, Dean, take your brother and run, get outside, don’t look back!”

—

Sam Winchester was a smart kid. Smart enough to get into Stanford despite a childhood of switching schools every two months and doing homework under the covers with a busted up flashlight and a solar-powered calculator that he nicked from his third grade Scholastic book fair. He was nineteen years old but he looked seventeen, all gangly limbs and tired eyes. His hair was brown and shiny and just long enough to not be a mullet, but not quite long enough for a ponytail. He was handsome, just still not quite grown into it yet. 

He worked at a small coffee shop. It was boring, but the pay was decent, and it was close to campus. 

Sam startled from his textbook and ran to the counter at the sound of a bell being rung aggressively. 

“Geez, does the service here always suck this much?”

Sam smiled. “Hey, Jess.”

Jess leaned over the counter and gave Sam a kiss, then scrunched up her nose. 

“Ew. You have coffee breath.”

“You have stale pizza breath, but I wasn’t gonna mention it.”

“You’re a gentleman. And you know that book better than most of the professors, Sam. You don’t have to study while you’re at work.

Sam shrugged. “No one’s coming in here to get coffee at 5 PM. I don’t have anything else to do.”

“You’re a nerd. And you know that book better than most of the professors do. You don’t need to study every second of free time you get.”

“Better boring than failing. Are you going to order anything?”

“Nope. Just reminding you that you said we were gonna watch Cat People tonight. And you’re out of milk.”

“What would I do without you?”

“Crash and burn, probably.”

“Probably. You’re holding up the line.”

Jess glanced behind her. There was one person waiting and looking down at his phone. He didn’t seem to be in any hurry. Jess rolled her eyes. 

“I gotta get to class anyway. See you at seven?”

“Seven.”

“Great. Bye!”

“Bye, Jessie. Love you.”

Jess reached around the counter, snagged a muffin, and ran out the door, only stopping to shout a quick “Love you more!”

—

Hours later, there was a black car driving past a dorm building. It paused right out front, then moved on. 

Inside the dorm building, Sam Winchester was asleep on the floor only a few feet away from his bed. He was laying on a pile of pillows and blankets in front of an old TV and VHS player, gently crackling with black and white static. His arm was slung over Jessica, who snored gently with her head tucked under his chin and her long blonde hair spread out in messy waves that almost completely covered her face. Sam wanted to marry her someday. But for the moment, he’d settle for late nights studying and watching old horror movies and falling asleep on the carpet. 

The car parked behind a dumpster just off campus. A man climbed out. 

Sam blinked awake and glanced up at the clock. 4 AM, same time he woke up every night. He rolled over and went back to sleep. 

It only lasted a moment. He heard the door click and he sat up. 

“Who’s there?” 

Sam, being a normal human person, didn’t have any weapons on him, so grabbed his heaviest text book and held it like a shield. 

No one walked in the door. Sam moved forward and checked, but no one was waiting outside. He pulled the door shut. 

The floor behind him creaked. He spun around. 

The mini fridge was open, and a figure was hunched in front of it. Sam tiptoed over and raised his textbook to hit them over the head. 

The figure stood and turned so fast that Sam had no time to react. They punched the book out of his hand, and he punched them in the eye. 

“Son of a bitch,” they muttered. Sam blinked. 

“Dean?”

“Hey, Sammy,” the figure said. His smile reflected the light from the fridge. He turned on the light. 

“What are you doing here?” Sam hissed. He flicked the light back off. 

“More importantly, what were you doing just then? I could’ve killed you. Sticking by the door, fully blocking off your sight to the window? You only live on the second story, Sammy, rookie mistake, you know better than that!” Dean said, turning the light back on. “How have you survived this long? It’s been, what, a year and a half?”

“This may come as a shock to you, but here in the normal world, being murdered in my sleep isn’t really one of my biggest worries. What are you _doing here?_ ”

“I _was_ checking your fridge for beer.”

“I’m underage,” Sam said. 

“Damn right you are,” Dean said. 

“Sam?” Jess said. The room went silent as she blinked the light out of her eyes. 

“I like your pajamas,” Dean mumbled. Jess frowned at him, glanced down at her giant Smurfs t-shirt and boxers, and looked back to Sam. 

“Jess, this is, um. This is my brother.”

Dean waved. 

“Wait. Really? I thought he’d be taller than you, somehow,” Jess said. “Is he short or is the standing-next-to-Sam effect fooling me?”

“I’m 6’1”!”

“Just because you’ve been saying that since tenth grade doesn’t make it true,” Sam said. “But yeah. This is him.”

“Can I know his name now?”

“It’s Dean,” Dean said, not really looking at Jess, too busy giving Sam a prime What The Hell look. “You didn’t tell—sorry, who is she?”

“This is Jess. My girlfriend.”

“God, she’s out of your league. But whatever—you didn’t tell your girlfriend my name?”

“He’s mentioned you exactly twice. Once he said ‘I have an older brother’ and the other time he said you taught him how to pick locks.”

“Hell yeah I did. But—okay, none of this matters, Sam, can I talk to you? In private?”

“Why in private?” Sam asked, moving to grab Jess’s hand. “I trust Jess.”

“I’m sure she’s great, but if you haven’t told her anything, then…” Dean trailed off. Sam stood his ground. 

“Fine. Uh. Look. Dad’s on a hunting trip, and he hasn’t been home in a few days.”

Sam’s eyes visibly widened. His grip on Jess’s hand tightened and all his muscles tensed at once. 

“What does that mean? Is everything okay?” Jess asked. Sam dropped her hand. 

“Can you wait outside, Jess?”

—

“So you’re just. Leaving,” Jess said. “Just like that.”

“Yeah, I know, I’m sorry, but—”

“Family emergency, I know. I get it. I’m not mad at you.” She ruffled Sam’s hair and kissed his forehead as he tossed a pair of jeans into his backpack. “Just be safe and whatever, okay?”

“Of course.”

Dean’s car honked outside. Sam and Jess winced in sync. 

“He knows it’s not even five in the morning yet, right?” Jess said. 

“He knows. He doesn’t care. I think he’s been driving all night.”

“Hmm. You should tell me all about him and your like, childhood and shit when you get back. It seems… interesting. And you know I’ll never judge you for it, no matter what.”

“Yeah, I know.” Sam stood and slung his backpack over his shoulder. “I should go. Bye, Jess. I love you.”

“Love you more.”

—

Ghost passed on. Town saved. Same drill as ever. 

Sam couldn’t deny that solving a mystery and killing a bad guy felt right in a way nothing at Stanford ever had. 

Wait, yes he could. He could totally deny it. 

Dean’s 1967 Chevy Impala pulled up in the parking lot and Sam hopped out. 

“See you next year, bitch” Dean said. 

“See you, jerk,” Sam said, and closed the door. 

Sam flopped down on his bed. He had already texted Jess to tell her he was on his way, but he texted her again to let her know he was home. He closed his eyes and soaked in the non-magical, non-monstrous Stanford dorm room atmosphere. 

He felt a warm drop of something hit his forehead. 

He opened his eyes, and was met with Jessica’s. They were open and looking right at him, all the way from the ceiling. Blood was dripping from her stomach. 

“Jess?” Sam whispered, and the ceiling caught on fire. 

Sam stood on his bed, eyes burning from the light and the smoke, trying to reach Jess or do anything at all. He was screaming and he didn’t know what he was saying, he couldn’t hear himself above the fire alarms. 

Outside, Dean drove his car onto the grass, parked it, and sprinted inside, through the crowd of onlookers and overachieving firemen that had already arrived. He ran to Sam’s room and he saw Jess, too. 

For just a second, Dean was four years old again. He heard his father yelling.

_“Go, Dean, take your brother and run, get outside, don’t look back!”_

So he dragged Sam out, ignoring his screams to be let go or to go back. He ran outside and didn’t look back until Sam was sitting on the sidewalk with bandages on his hands and a shock blanket around his shoulders. And then he took Sam by the arm, led him to the car, and kept running away.


	2. SEASON 1 EPISODE 2 (part 1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam has a bad dream.

Sam and Dean Winchester hunt and kill monsters. 

Generally speaking, it’s simple. The details vary from case to case and there’s always more research to do and things you’ve never seen before, but the process is the same every time. You figure out what you’re dealing with and you figure out how to kill it. Flash a few fake IDs and break a couple concealed carry laws and you’re outta there, off to the next town, the next bad guy. 

The trouble comes when the monsters aren’t monsters in the way you think they should be. Some of them look like people (sometimes like your brother, in the case of that shapeshifter in St. Louis). Some of them think they are people, like ghosts that don’t know they’re dead or werewolves that don’t know where they go at night. You can’t call them liars because they think they’re telling the truth, but you have to call them monsters. Even if they lived their whole lives thinking they were human. They can pretend churches don’t make their skin crawl and exorcisms don’t make them feel lightheaded, they can even try to forget the time when their brother cleaned a cut on their arm with holy water and they screamed. It was a long time ago, who knows what happened. Sixteen was a weird age for everybody. 

It gets harder to pretend you don’t see the signs when they won’t let you sleep at night, though. When you wake up sweating at 4 AM every night, like clockwork. When ignoring the signs got your girlfriend killed. 

_ It’s dark outside. The air is cold. The wood floor is creaking. Dean looks focused and terrified.  _

This isn’t how the dream usually goes. 

—

“Hey, Sammy.”

“Saaaammy.”

“Sammy!”

“What!”

Sam jerked awake so hard he hit his head on the roof of the car. Dean was barely looking at the road, more focused on not-staring at Sam with this cocktail of fake humor and real concern in his eyes that only Dean could have. 

“You were muttering and shit. You good?”

“Yeah, uh. Yeah. Hey, Dean?”

“Mhm?”

“Can we go see Bobby?”

“Uh, sure, I guess, soon as we check out this deal in Ohio.”

Sam looked like he was nine and begging for a dog. 

“Oh, god, what,” Dean said. 

“Can we go see Bobby, like. Now?” Correction. Sam had the exact same look in his eyes as when he was fifteen and woke Dean up in the middle of the night to tell him he’d scratched the car trying to drive it illegally. 

“We have a case to work.”

“I know—”

“Sioux Falls is literally in the opposite of where we’re headed.”

“I  _ know _ , but—”

“We got a job to do, Sammy, we can’t just drop it to go catch up with an old friend—”

“Ithinkhemightbeindanger.”

Dean took a long, slow breath. 

“Come again?” he said through his teeth. 

“Um. I think he might be in danger.”

Dean stopped the car. The guy behind him honked, and Dean flipped him off through the window. He took out his phone, scrolled through his contacts, hit call, and put it on speaker. Sam hid his face in his hands. 

“The hell you want, boy? Callin’ me outta nowhere after a whole damn  _ year _ of voicemails—” came the flat, gruff voice from the phone. Dean hung up. 

“He seems fine to me.”

“Dean, just—”

“No, Sam. You’ve been acting weird since Jess—I mean, I know it’s gotta be rough or whatever, but it’s been like two months and you’re still having those nightmares—”

“I didn’t last night.”

“It sure looked like you did!”

“It was a different nightmare. It was—it was about Bobby. That’s why, uh. That’s why I think he might be in trouble. Or he might be soon.”

“You think he’s in trouble. Because. You had a bad dream about it.”

“Yeah, um. I’ve been meaning to tell you about that, actually, uh. So. Thing is.”

“Spit it out, Sammy.”

“I dreamed about Jess dying.”

“No shit.”

“Before it happened. For weeks, actually. Every single detail.” Dean’s face only got colder as Sam seemed to get more distressed. Dean stared out the window at the cars passing around the stalled Impala. 

“I knew the music the guys next door were playing. I knew the shirt she was wearing, I knew the way she was wearing her hair—” Sam cut himself off, eyes turning red and watery, legs curled tight against his chest. He didn’t look at Dean, just at the dashboard in front of him. Dean started the car. 

—

Bobby Singer never had kids of his own, but he ended up half raising two little boys named Sam and Dean whenever their dad couldn’t hack it.

Which was frequent.

When Sam was thirteen, Dean drove him all the way up to Bobby’s (which was almost six hours away from the apartment they were renting) because he was scared their dad would find out that he had kissed a boy behind the bleachers. 

Dean used to show up every once in a while on his own in a borrowed (“borrowed”) car with nothing more than his old leather jacket, five bucks, and a cheeky grin, claiming he just wanted to catch up; Sam was sleeping over at a friend’s house and he had the night free.

Bobby knew damn well that John Winchester would never let his son stay the night at a stranger’s house, and that if Sam was “sleeping over at a friend’s house” then either John went through some drastic personality changes very quickly or that he and Sam had a fight again and Sam stormed out before John could do anything. Bobby believed in a hell of a lot, but miracles were a stretch. So he usually figured it was the latter. It was the same story every time he could convince Dean to tell it: they fought, Sam ran off, Dean stayed, John went out for a beer and told Dean not to be there when he came back.

So Bobby would order a pizza and pop in an old movie and Dean would stay until he got the call from John: “get your brother and get back here. Toss him in the trunk if you have to. We got work to do.” It could take up to two days for the call to come, depending on how bad the fight had been and how long afterwards it had taken John to sober up. Sometimes, Dean would leave and come right back with Sam in tow; Bobby was never sure exactly why—it could have been Sam being stubborn or Dean being protective or John changing his mind. No way to be sure.

The last time Dean showed up after a fight, he had his dad’s car and a nearly dangerous BAC. He talked so much about how John and Sam were “never going to fight again” that Bobby half started to think one of them was dead. And as far as John was concerned, one of them was: Sam had gone off to school all alone, in California. Bobby wasn’t surprised. Dean was, apparently. Surprised and distraught and very, very drunk. Bobby let him crash on the couch and he was gone by the morning. And that was it. No calls, no letters, no visits, a hell of a lot of voicemails. Bobby had to assume that Dean was either dead or sulking, but God only knew which one.

_ It was sulking, _ Bobby thought as he opened the door to Dean standing there with Sam by his side, looking sheepish. Mental note. Out loud, he said:

“Dean Winchester, you son of a bitch, are you tryin’ to scare me to death? Do you get yer kicks from givin’ old men heart attacks now?”

Dean had no chance to respond before Bobby had pulled him into a bear hug. 

“Good to see you too, Bobby,” Dean choked out. Bobby let go of him and punched him in the arm.

“Why the hell haven’t you called me, boy?”

“Been busy.”

“Too busy for a ten minute phone call at any point in the last year?”

“Uh.” Dean glanced around for a subject change. He grabbed Sam’s arm and tugged him forward. “Sammy’s back!”

“I see that.”

“Hello to you, too,” Sam said. 

“I’ll be happy to see you once I’m done bein’ mad at yer brother. Go inside and open a couple beers, would you?”

“Yes, sir.” Sam slipped past Bobby and into the house. Dean glared at him over Bobby’s shoulder.

Bobby waited for a moment and lowered his voice. “Dean Winchester, did you drag your poor brother out of school?”

“No, he’s—well. Dad’s missing. He was just coming with me for one hunt, just to look, but some. Stuff. Happened. And he dropped out.”

“What kinda stuff?”

“It’s, um. Kinda complicated. Y’know how Mom died?”

“No, Dean, I forgot. Yes, I know how Mary died.”

“So. The same thing happened to Sam’s girlfriend. The exact same thing.”

Bobby rubbed his eyes and ran his hand through his beard.

“Does your daddy know about this?”

“No.”

“Good. He finds out and he’ll lock Sam up in a bomb shelter ‘till he’s eighty just to keep ‘im safe.”

“Y’know, that’s almost tempting.”

“Oh, my God.”

—

Sam, Dean, and Bobby sat around the table drinking their drinks (beers for Dean and Bobby, Coke for Sam at Dean’s insistence. As if Dean didn’t start drinking when he was twelve.) and exchanging lighthearted news about their lives since they saw each other last. Everything was quiet. 

“That’s weird,” Sam said.

“What is?”

“Cell service isn’t working. No data or anything. I’m not getting any sort of connection on any of my phones.”

“God, kids these days and their phones, am I right, Bobby?” Dean elbowed Bobby with a halfhearted laugh, but Bobby was checking his own phones.

“Nothin’s working,” he muttered.

“Guess the cell towers are being screwy or something,” Dean said. 

“Yeah… I oughta go check on Jody.”

“Jody?”

“Neighbor. You two stay here.”

Sam gave Dean a look that could only be described as somehow simultaneously panicked and smug. A classic Sam Look.

“We’ll come with you, Bobby. Might be nice to meet your friends,” he said.

“Neighbor,” Bobby corrected. “I’m only checkin’ on her because she’s on crutches right now an’ I don’t want her to fall down with no way to call anyone. But fine, I guess we can make it a family outing, if that’s what you want.”

The salvage yard surrounding Bobby’s house was big enough that calling anyone his “neighbor” was kind of a stretch; it was a seven minute walk down the road over to Jody’s. Bobby walked fast a few feet ahead of Sam and Dean.

“Hey, Dean,” Sam muttered, elbowing his brother.

“What?”

“Look at that.” Sam pointed at a splintered old telephone pole so full of ancient staples and nails from missing cat posters and yard sale ads that it probably would’ve been an effective lightning rod. 

“It’s a pole.”

“No shit, Dean, look closer.”

Dean blinked a couple times before he saw it—among the clutter there was a clear space in the pole where someone had carved a word.

_ CROATOAN. _

“Huh,” Dean said.


	3. EPISODE 2 (part 2)

Jody Mills was doing fine, thank you. She could handle herself for twenty minutes. But she was polite and she really wanted to meet Bobby’s boys, so she didn’t complain. 

As soon as they walked in her door, she knew they weren’t actually related to Bobby. She didn’t know what Bobby had looked like as a younger man, but it could not have been anything like these damn model-lookin kids. 

“Your phone workin’, Jody?” Bobby asked.

“No.”

“Reckon the signal’s down in the whole city?”

“More than likely. These are your boys?”

“Yeah. Sam, Dean, quit hidin’ behind each other like toddlers and come say hi.”

Dean stepped forward and shook Jody’s hand, but Sam didn’t move. There was a long pause while everyone looked at him, expectant, and he just stared at the floor behind Jody. The entryway was mostly covered with a rug, but past that was old hardwood, and Sam apparently found it goddamn mesmerizing.

“Sammy,” Dean said, just loud enough to get Sam to snap out of it.

“Oh. Um, hi, Miss Jody. Nice to meet you.”

“Uh huh,” Jody said.

“Sorry about him, he’s been weirder than usual lately,” Dean said, pointedly elbowing Sam in the gut.

“You alright, son?” Bobby asked.

“I think we should leave. Uh. We should leave.” Sam fumbled over his words, distracted. “We should leave now.”

“Y’all two go ahead, I’ll hang back and talk with Jody a minute,” Bobby said.

“No! No, you, you should come. Um. Miss Jody, you can come too, if you want!”

In that unique way siblings do, Dean gave Sam a look that only Sam could possibly decipher as meaning “what the fuck”. Sam returned with a look that only Dean could possibly decipher as “just go with me, it’s important”. Dean nodded.

“Yeah, that’s a good idea, actually. I can bring the car around if you don’t wanna walk with your crutches, Jody.”

“I guess that’s alright,” Bobby said, having clearly guessed that something was very wrong.

“Sure, I got nothing better to do.” Jody shrugged.

“We’ll get the car, then. C’mon, Sammy.”

Sam nodded and they headed out. As the door shut, Dean could hear something about “dumbass boys” muttered by Bobby.

“Wanna explain what that was about?” Dean hissed.

“My dream. It was in that room.”

“Your dream.”

“Yeah.”

“Did your dream have that?” Dean asked, pointing over Sam’s shoulder. Sam spun around to see a man walking down the street toward them, knife in his hand and blood pouring from his shoulder. He said “help” so weakly that it was barely audible, but the message was clear as he collapsed to his knees. Dean rushed over to him and propped him up, half dragging him toward Jody’s.

“Get the door, Sam!”

Sam didn’t have time to fear what was supposed to happen in Jody’s house, he just opened the door and helped Dean get the guy inside.

“Bobby!” Dean shouted. Bobby ran in and only took half a second to look at the guy before he launched into action.

“Lay him down, Dean, prop up his back on some pillows. Sam, help Jody get me some whiskey, thread, and a needle, I can stitch ‘im up.” Bobby tore off his jacket and pressed it into the man’s shoulder. “Go! We ain’t got time to gawk!” Everyone moved to follow Bobby’s orders, only pausing to rest and think once Bobby was halfway done with the stitches. Sam helped Jody into a chair, apologizing profusely for the mess. Dean paced.

“I don’t like this, Bobby,” Dean said.

“You think I do? The phone lines and now this, this ain’t a coincidence.”

“What do you mean? What’s going on, what happened to Martin?” Jody asked.

“You know him?” Dean asked.

“Now, Jody—” Bobby started.

“Robert Singer, don’t you bullshit me. I dunno exactly what it is you do, but this has to do with your… business, right? Are they a part of it too?”

Bobby grunted. “Boys, go see what you can see. Be back in two hours or I’ll assume you got your asses killed, okay?” he said, fully ignoring Jody. Sam and Dean nodded and left.

“You get the Impala, I’ll go look in the direction that guy came from,” Sam said.

“You got your gun?”

“Yeah.”

“Holy water?”

“Yes, Dean.”

“Silver—” 

“Go get the car, Dean!”

“Okay, I’m going!”

They split up, running in opposite directions down the sidewalk. 

Dean was half in his car before he saw the man underneath it.

“Who the hell are you?” he asked, hand on his gun. The man slid out from under the car, hands up.

“Looked like somethin’ was off, that’s all. Just tryina help a brother out,” the man said. Dean frowned.

“Lemme look at it.”

Dean slid under the belly of the car. The man climbed into the front seat.

“Hey, what the hell—”

Dean barely managed to roll out from under the car as the guy started it up and started to drive. He made a tight turn as Dean stood, and started charging straight for him. Dean swore and grabbed his gun.

“Sorry, baby,” he said as he shot out the tires and leapt out of the way. The car went careening into a fence and fizzled to a stop. Dean trained his gun on the driver’s side door as the man stepped out, bleeding from the head but hardly seeming to notice. He sprinted at Dean with his bare hands, howling like a rabid dog. Dean shot him three times in the chest, and he fell to the ground, limp. Dean sniffed.

“Sulfur,” he muttered, but no demons appeared. The smell almost seemed to be coming from the man dead on the ground. Dean splashed some holy water on him, but no reaction.

“ _ Christo _ .”

Nothing. The guy was dead as a doornail.

“Well, fuck,” Dean said.

A quarter mile away, Sam was slowly approaching a woman and child that were backed into a corner. The woman was holding out a kitchen knife and the child was crying. They both had dark hair and dark eyes, and the child was covered in freckles. Sam held up his hands in surrender.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Sam said.

“How do I know that?” the woman spat. “You could be one of them.”

“One of who?”

“Don’t act like you don’t know.”

Sam took a step back and stopped, hands still up. “I won’t hurt you.I just wanna know what’s going on. Please.”

The woman lowered her knife, but kept holding it so tightly her knuckles were white. “Don’t you get any closer than that. Stay back and we can talk.”

“Alright, alright,” Sam said. He sat cross-legged down in the dirt. The woman relaxed a little.

“I was at home when my son’s friend came over, looking for him. I sent him up to my boy’s room and I—it was quiet for a while, but they came down to the kitchen, and—” The woman choked back tears. “My son grabbed a knife and he—he stabbed my husband. It’s like he wasn’t himself anymore, he wasn’t  _ human _ , I don’t know what that boy did to him, but—oh, God. My son’s friend, he grabbed the knife and slit his own arm and spread the blood over my husband’s wound, I don’t know, I was calling the police but the phones were down. But the next thing I knew, my husband was attacking me and I—I slit his throat and ran with my daughter. He was one of them. Anyone could be. They look just the same, but they—they can’t be human. I know, that’s crazy, but I swear it’s what I saw.”

“I believe you,” Sam said. “I believe you. Please, come with me, I can take you someplace safe.”

“How do I know I can trust you?”

“You said the kid wiped his blood on your husband’s open wound, right?”

“Yeah.”

“It sounds like whatever this is, it’s transmitted by blood to blood contact. I’m not bleeding anywhere, so I can’t be infected, right?”

“I—I guess.”

“Come with me. I can help.” Sam stood slowly and held a hand out to the woman. Cautiously, she took it.

Dean was already back by the time Sam brought the woman and her daughter—Rachel and Marcie—back to Jody’s. In the hour he’d been gone, the house was completely fortified. There was salt at every door and window, devil’s traps under every rug. Dean had lugged as many guns as he could carry back from the Impala. Martin was asleep on the couch.

Dean levelled his shotgun at Rachel as they walked in. “Sam?”

“I told them we could keep them safe, Dean.”

Dean lowered the gun.

“Well, get them inside, then.”

Sam and Dean sat at the table and compared notes while Bobby taught Rachel how to hold a gun. Whatever this thing was, it wasn’t possession—not by a demon, anyway, and no ghost was this powerful. It was like a virus, spread through blood that made people start killing anyone in sight. They weren’t mindless zombies, though; the one who attacked Dean was at least strategic enough to steal a car, and the one that infected Rachel’s family pretended to be a friend. The sulfur scent seemed to suggest that demons were involved somehow, but it was anyone’s guess how. Dean carried a load of Bobby’s books over to try and research with the internet down, but no luck. Sam busied himself searching through his father’s journal for any possible mention of anything remotely similar.

“Oh, shit,” he said. The low murmur of conversation quieted as everyone turned to Sam. “Dean, come look at this.”

Sam pointed at a passage in the journal as Dean craned his neck over the back of Sam’s chair to read.

“Oh, shit,” Dean said. “Croatoan.”

“Croatoan.”

Bobby looked from Sam to Dean, realization slowly dawning on his face.

“You don’t mean… shit, really?”

“Dean and I saw the word croatoan carved into a telephone pole outside, and with the sulfur…”

“It fits Dad’s theory.”

“Would one of you boys  _ please _ care to explain to the normal people in the room what the hell y’all’re going on about?” Jody snapped. “If my legs were working, Bobby, I swear to God I’d’ve arrested you already.”

“You’re a cop?” Sam and Dean said in unison, both instinctively reaching to cover up the very illegal weapons on their persons. Bobby rolled his eyes.

“We’re kinda past that, jackasses. She knows what we do, more or less. I helped her with a vamp problem in town a few months back,” he said. “Jody, their daddy thought that the disappearance of the Roanoke colony back in the 1500s was caused by a demon named Croatoan, and that’s why the word was carved into a tree. Course, John’s a ravin’ goddamn lunatic—”

“Hey!” Dean said. Bobby ignored him.

“—so I assumed that theory was just a load of horseshit. But Dean said that, the guy who attacked him, his blood smelled like sulfur, and that’s a textbook sign of demonic activity. The town’s cell service is all cut off, and I’m willin’ to bet that the roads are blocked off, too. So, by the time anyone gets in here…”

“We’ll all have disappeared,” Jody said.

“Exactly.” 

“Well. Shit. So how do we stop it?”

Bobby looked to Sam. Sam looked to Dean. Dean rubbed at his eyes, thinking.

“I dunno if there’s a cure, but. I shot the guy that attacked me, and he seemed pretty damn dead. I think they’re still human. Their bodies are, at least. So we can kill them,” Dean said. Jody nodded.

“Hey, sorry to interrupt, but, um—Marcie, sweetie, cover your ears—what the  _ everloving fuck _ are y’all talking about?” Rachel said. “Are you telling me my husband and son were possessed by demons?”

“Well, no, just infected with some demonic virus,” Sam said, helpfully. Rachel glared at him.

“Look, lady. We’re—” Dean started, but he was cut off by a sharp elbow to the back of his head courtesy of a suddenly very conscious Martin.

“Martin!” Jody yelled. Bobby was already loading his gun. “Martin, talk to me. Don’t—Bobby, don’t you shoot him, he’s a good guy, he works at the pharmacy—”

“And unless he can give me a damn good reason why he just attacked Dean, he’s infected, Jody!”

While they argued, Martin managed to wrestle Dean to the ground and launched himself at Sam. Sam shot him in the head and he fell to the floor.

“Oh, my God,” Rachel choked out.

“Nobody touch him!” Bobby shouted. “If his blood gets in so much as a paper cut, you’re screwed.”

“Bobby,” Sam said.

“Help me clean this up, Dean.”

Dean cracked open the window to try and get the increasingly overwhelming smell of sulfur and blood out of the room and went to find a mop. The night air from outside was cold.

“Bobby,” Sam said. 

“What do you—oh. Oh, God.” 

A mop clattered to the ground as Dean walked in and saw what Bobby was seeing. “Fuck,” he said.

Sam had splashes of Martin’s blood soaking into his skin and hair, but that wasn’t the problem. The problem was that the blood wasn’t all Martin’s. Dean looked focused and terrified.

“He scratched me. While I was reaching for my gun,” Sam said softly. “I’m infected.”

“How long until it kicks in?” Bobby asked, staring at the floor.

“About three hours, if Martin’s any indication,” Jody said.

“Alright then,” Sam said, almost whispering. He cocked his gun and started to head to the back of the house.

“No, wait, Sammy—fuck no, man, give me the gun,” Dean said, grabbing Sam’s shoulder.

“I’m infected, Dean. I could kill you.”

“We got three hours to figure something out.”

“Maybe. Martin could’ve been biding his time.”

Dean tore the gun from Sam’s hands.

“No,” he said.

Rachel piped up from the back of the room. “Isn’t he right, though? He’s infected. Best to stop it before it starts.”

“No!” Dean barked. “No one’s shooting my brother, goddamn it! We’ll figure something out.”

“Dean—” Sam started.

“Shut up. Bobby, you got any ideas?”

Bobby shook his head. “I ain’t even heard of anything like this, Dean.”

“Well, fine. C’mon, Sam.” Dean grabbed Sam’s arm and dragged him down the hallway.

“Where are we—” 

“Here should work.” Dean half pushed Sam into what looked like Jody’s guest room. “When we were salting the house she said the latch on this window doesn’t work. Can’t get out. If you turn, you’ll turn in here. Away from everybody. Hey, she’s got a deck of cards. Poker?”

Sam frowned, but he sat on the floor. 

“You deal.”

—

Bobby scrubbed at the floor. There was no blood left, but he kept scrubbing, because he couldn’t think of a single other thing he could do to help anyone right then. Nobody spoke. Nobody really moved. Jody had raided her fridge and pantry trying to be hospitable, but no one really wanted to eat. Only Marcie could sleep despite the hour. They could hear banging on the doors one or two times, but Bobby had pushed all Jody’s furniture into a barricade, and no one was getting in, demon virus be damned. So it was just waiting. Waiting for everything to be okay again, somehow. Waiting for a gunshot from the blocked-off back room to tell everyone that Sam was gone. Waiting for rescue, somehow. Waiting.

More banging sounded at the door, but it was different this time. Measured and curt, not just slamming into the door full-force.

“BOBBY SINGER!” shouted a man’s voice, muffled by layers of drywall and furniture. “ROBERT STEPHEN SINGER, ARE YOU IN THERE? LET ME IN, GODDAMNIT!”

“Who is that?” Jody asked. 

“Get everybody back into yer room, alright? Push your bed against the door. I think it’s a friend, but better safe’n sorry.”

Jody nodded and shepherded Marcie and Rachel back into her room. Bobby set to pushing some of the furniture out of the way. The banging came on the door again.

“Give me a second, boy!” Bobby yelled through the door. He shoved a desk just far enough to crack the door open.

When he tugged on the handle, Bobby saw exactly who he thought he would. He splashed the man with holy water.

“It’s me, Bobby. Let me in.”

“You bleedin’ anywhere?”

“No.”

“How’d you find us?”

“GPS in Sam’s phone shut off somewhere around your house. No one was there but the trashed Impala, so I walked around. Saw the horseshoe above this door, figured that was your work.”

“You keep track of the GPS in Sam’s phone? Still?”

“Of course I do.”

“Well, that’s as much proof of yer identity as anything. Can’t make up your brand of crazy.” Bobby pulled the door open just far enough for John Winchester to squeeze inside, and immediately closed and re-barricaded it.

“So, where are they?” John asked. Bobby grimaced.

“About that.”

—

“How long’s it been?” Sam asked, again. He was laying on the hardwood floor and tracing imaginary constellations in the popcorn ceiling. Dean checked his phone.

“Three and a half hours,” he said. He was laying next to Sam, gun at his side, oscillating between bored and terrified. “How you feeling?”

“No more demonic than usual.”

Dean sighed and silence settled over them. 

Outside, John Winchester was pacing around the room.

“You’re sure it takes three hours?” he asked for the third time.

“Not  _ sure _ sure, but sure enough,” Bobby said. “Lines up with Martin and with Rachel’s story, anyway.”

“But it’s been more than three hours since you locked my sons, one of which is  _ probably infected _ , in a back room and left them for dead.”

“They locked their goddamn selves in there, John. Dean wouldn’t shoot Sam, Sam didn’t wanna hurt nobody.”

“Well, why hasn’t he turned yet?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he has, I guess. Maybe he’s just fooling Dean.”

“How can we tell?”

“We can’t.”

Jody piped up from the side of the room. “You can tell by their blood, right? Everyone infected, their blood smelled like sulfur. Dean and Rachel both mentioned it.”

“Alright, then,” John said, and he sulked off to the back room with his pocket knife in his hand. He banged on the locked guest room door. “Open the door, Dean!” he ordered. He heard a muffled “Dad?” from inside, but he ignored it as Dean cracked open the door.

“Where the hell have you been? Are you okay?” Dean asked. John just pushed past him and knelt beside Sam, who was sitting cross-legged. Without a word, he grabbed Sam’s arm and slashed it with the knife. Sam sucked in a breath through his teeth and suppressed all the variations on “ow! Fuck!” that immediately came to mind.

“Dad!” Dean said. He rushed over and knelt by his father, instinctively reaching to take away the knife but pulling his hand back just before he could. “What the fuck, Dad!” he said instead, as he took off his own jacket to help stop the bleeding.

“That cop lady said if he was infected, his blood would smell like sulfur,” John said. “It doesn’t.”

“Could’ve given me a little fuckin’ warning,” Sam muttered.

“Sorry, what was that?”

“Nothing, sir,” Dean interrupted before Sam could start a fight. “Where have you been? We’ve been looking for you, we thought you might be in trouble—”

“Well, I’m not. And it’s best that you don’t look for me anymore, Dean.”

“I mean, we don’t need to anymore, you’re right here.”

“I just came because I thought one or both of you was dead in a fucking ditch. The GPS in Sam’s phone just stopped transmitting and I got worried.”

“You—wait, you track his GPS?”

“Of course I do, Dean. And good thing, too, because you’re apparently doing a pretty shit job of taking care of him.”

“I—” 

“Wait. Hold on,” Sam said. “You’ve known where we were this  _ whole time _ ? We thought you were dead! Would it have killed you to send a fucking postcard?”

“You watch your language with me, Samuel. I was trying to keep you  _ safe _ .”

“Oh, you were trying to keep us safe, yeah, because you’ve always cared about that, not like you’ve ever dangled us as bait in front of a monster or anything. Safety, your number one priority, like always. John Winchester, responsible parent of the year.”

“Sammy,” Dean said. “At least let him explain.”

“I think I’ve heard enough of his goddamn explanations to last me a lifetime, actually, thanks.”

“ _ Sammy _ ,” Dean said, more forcefully this time. Sam settled down to a simmer. “Dad, seriously. We need to know what’s going on.”

John bristled. “Fine,” he said. “ _ Fine _ . Sam, Dean, I know what killed your mother.”

Sam didn’t have any witty reply to that. There was nothing he could think so say. Dean was just glad that he was already on the floor, because he was shaking so much he didn’t think he could stand.

“What was it?” Dean whispered.

“Demon. Bad one. Not like any we’ve dealt with. I’ve met him once now, I barely survived. He’s got these—these yellow eyes, I’ve never seen anything like it.”   
  
“Okay,” Dean said. “Okay.” He put his hand on Sam’s shoulder, stopping him from saying anything before he even started. “That’s—I wanna kill the son of a bitch, but we’ve got a more pressing crisis right now. Now that Dad’s here, maybe we can figure out what’s going on. Are we sure Sam isn’t infected?”

“As sure as we can be,” John said.

“Okay. Let’s go back out front and regroup with Bobby.”

“Wait,” Sam said. “Dad, we need to—I need to tell you something.”

“Sammy, are you sure that’s—”

“I’ve been having visions. Like, premonitions. And they keep coming true.”

John froze halfway through standing up, but he didn’t say anything. He straightened out and ran his hand through his beard.

“Dean’s right. We have bigger problems right now,” he said, and left the room without another word.

The Winchester family filed out into Jody Mills’s living room in the same formation they’ve walked in since Sam learned to walk. John in front, Dean in the back, Sam between them, protected. John always protected Sam. Dean used to think John saw Sam as fragile, like some ceramic doll more than a person, but right now he was getting a different impression. Like Sam was less of a ceramic doll and more of an atomic bomb you had to handle carefully or it’d destroy half the country. There was just something different. 

The living room was silent when they walked back in. Completely silent. Everyone was holding their breath.

“What’s going on?” John asked.

“Nothing,” Bobby said.

“I’m serious, Bobby—”

“So am I. Nothing is going on. Listen.”

The living room was not silent. The town was silent. Everything was silent.

John grabbed his shotgun and pushed his way out the door. There were corpses piled around the door, the people who had been trying to get in heaped over each other like they’d just crumpled where they stood. There were a few more if you looked down the road, scattered, motionless. John shot one of them in the head. The shot happened and then it was over, just a little wrinkle in the blanket of quiet. Nothing stood back up and started throwing punches. No one screamed or cried. From the gunshot in the corpse’s forehead, black smoke leaked out. It didn’t fly up and collect like a demon fleeing; it just fell to the ground and pooled for a half a second before dissipating. It leaked from the pores of every body on the ground like syrup, slow and viscous, before just fading out, taking the smell of sulfur with it. John stood with his gun poised for another minute, waiting, holding his breath like the rest of the city. 

And then a bird chirped, and a dog barked, and a branch fell off of a tree, and the crickets hummed, and it was over.

Dean walked up behind John, knocking quietly on the wall to announce his presence.

“Is it over?” he asked.

“It’s over,” John said. “For now, anyway.”

“What was it?”

“Somethin’ bad.”

They could hear rustling from inside, people standing and moving and muttering, cautiously taking apart their barricades and defenses. Dean turned to go back in, but John grabbed his shoulder.

“Listen to me, Dean,” he said, low and intense. “Promise me.”

“Yes, sir,” Dean said, more on instinct than anything. He felt like melting under his dad’s gaze, like he was twelve years old and caught walking outside in the middle of the night. “I promise.”

“We got a job to do, Dean. We got to do it no matter what it takes, do you hear me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Sam is in trouble. And if you can’t save him, you’re gonna have to kill him. Understood?”

Dean blinked.

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“What—what trouble? We can figure it out, you’re here now, we can—”

John shook his head. He ruffled Dean’s hair in something close to affection and lowered his eyes, turning away, out toward the street.

“I’m trusting you, Dean,” he said. “Go in and help. I’ll be there in a minute.”

“... Yes, sir.”

Dean stepped inside and closed the door behind him.

“Where’s Dad?” Sam asked. “What’s going on?”

“It’s over,” Dean said.

“How? They can’t have just  _ stopped _ , what did Dad—” Sam was cut off by Dean yanking him into a rib-breaking hug.

“Don’t fuckin’ scare me like that, man,” Dean muttered. “I thought I was gonna have to shoot you.”

“Well, you didn’t.”

“Damn straight. I’m never going to hurt you, do you hear me? And I’m sure as hell not gonna let anything else hurt you, not bad, anyway. I promise.”

Sam laughed, but he didn’t pull away. He wrapped his arms around his brother, tacitly agreeing to never mention this again.

“Okay, Dean.”

Dean sniffed and let go.

“Don’t mean to break up your Disney Channel Original Movie moment, but would you two mind to help?” Bobby said, trying to single handedly drag Jody’s couch out from the glass deck door.

“Yeah, of course,” Sam said, and jogged over to help. Dean turned back and opened the front door again, just a crack. John Winchester was turning the corner down the street, hopping over a fence and out of sight. Dean sighed and closed the door.

**Author's Note:**

> find me on Instagram @good.b.ee or on tumblr @au-where-spn-is-good ! come say hi


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